Ask Jonathan Coulton About the Transformation From Code Monkey to Internet Star

Even though he created the definitive guide to enjoying yourself outside, Jonathan Coulton is best known for the programmer anthem Code Monkey, his Thing a Week project, and writing the theme song to Portal. In 2005 Coulton left his programming job to pursue his music career, and has since become a successful one man music label. Jonathan has agreed to answer your questions about robots, life, and internet stardom. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply.

Have You Been Approached by a Label?

[eldavojohn]

Some current stars have made a career out of much less than what you have simply by signing a record deal with a label. Your song "Still Alive" from the Portal Soundtrack could easily have some filler phoned in around it for a 10 track album. Have you ever been approached by a major record label with a multi-million dollar signing? If not, what would be your response to such a proposal? Since you've already experienced success, would you admit to a point in your career when you would have been vulnerable to such an offer? Have you considered throwing your lot in with an independent record label? There are hundreds in Brooklyn, what stops you from joining one or forming your own to foster more artists like yourself?

Where Do you Do Your Recording?

[eldavojohn]

You've released a number of studio albums, where are they recorded? Your own place? Do you have sound engineers or is it all DIY? If you have sound engineers, how do you reimburse them? How did you fund your setup if you use it yourself? Are things like an expensive mac hardware, isolation booths and Pro Tools a requirement to get decent sound quality or do you just wing it with whatever and some Sure microphones?

Do You Apply Programming to Your Music?

[eldavojohn]

In music theory, there are a lot of things that tempt developers to "algorithmize" it. Coming from a programming background, did you/do you experiment with that? What about making your own patches or tweaking audio effects? Do you still code at all or is all of your time devoted to music and writing now?

Lawsuits?

[eldavojohn]

You've done many parody songs like the recent song about Tom Cruise being crazy as a Scientologist [thingaweekredux.com]. Have you faced any lawsuits because of subject matter or parody? How have they been resolved? Have you ever been forced to discontinue with something for fear or threat of litigation?

Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

You've released some (all?) of your music under the CC-BY-NC license. What are some of the coolest things you've seen done by other people with your songs?

Creative Commons

[SarekOfVulcan]

Reposting my accidentally-anonymous question from earlier:

You've released some (all?) of your music under the CC-BY-NC license. What are some of the coolest things you've seen done by other people with your songs?

Best Video Game Song Ever?

[N0Man74]

"Still Alive" is considered by many to possibly be, "the best video game song ever." Were you surprised by the acclaim that it has received, and did that put any additional pressure on you while creating a song for Portal 2?

Code Monkey

[j33pn]

Did you ever hook-up with that receptionist?

If you could change one thing about copyright law

[supersloshy]

If you could change one thing about copyright/IP law in the USA, what would it be? If you can't think of only one thing, two or three would be fine. You license your music under a Creative Commons license, which is great as I support Creative Commons and other, similar licenses very much.

Second, optional question: Who are some of your favorite independent musicians (like you)?

Re:Have You Been Approached by a Label?

[Edzilla2000]

If it's given for free, then it's better if you get it from a torrent. That way, you don't use (potentially) expensive bandwidth that the artist has to pay. Cheap content distribution is what p2p is made for.

Thing a Week Progress

[greg1104]

Your year of "Thing a Week" resulted in many great songs. With classics like "RE: Your Brains" on week 26 and "Code Money" on #29, from the outside and in retrospect it seems obvious you'd already reached serious momentum halfway through. Was this apparent to yourself, and did you ever consider ending the experiment early based on that progress? I think it's interesting to consider schedule vs. goal oriented development as something applicable to a self-improvement context.

Career longevity

[ElMiguel]

Are you worried that at some point you won't be able to support your family by writing (and performing) music? Do you have any plans for that situation?